Rock Scene (March 1976)

You know and I know that Rock Scene wasn’t a fanzine, and that it probably has no place on this blog. Yet they were so well-situated at the nexus of the pre-punk void, before 1976 and all it represented, that it’s one of the absolute best places to get a handle on how tastes, fashions, criticism and fandom itself were evolving in the mid-1970s. I mean here we are in March 1976. There’s no mention of the Sex Pistols, who’d played 13 gigs to that point, but everyone here will hear them in about in a few weeks and go bananas – the shot in the arm editors Richard and Lisa Robinson were looking for in their post-Dolls landscape, despite all that’s already going on right in their hometown of New York City. Rock Scene would embrace punk in a big way, without leaving the remnants of glitter, glam and hard rock behind, at least in what I think was their 1976-78 heyday.

Rock Scene was very much a NYC mag. They called themselves “The alternative to the alternatives!”. While that may be going a bit far in the era of Back Door Man, Who Put The Bomp, Chatterbox and countless others that I don’t own and wish I did, I actually enjoy it even more than Creem and certainly more than Circus. This is despite not having a ton of written content and much “criticism”, as it were. This March 1976 issue is a big drunken party on the streets and in the clubs, full of photos and photo essays with only a modicum of commentary to support it all. I figure as long as they were paying photographers like Bob Gruen, Leee Childers and Raymond le Fourchette well for their snaps – because they’re fantastic – it’s actually pretty fun to read an inversion of the text-over-visuals form that’s pretty standard in any fanzine or magazine dabbling in underground rock. 

Besides, it is a fanzine when the editors are given so much leeway to cover whatever the hell they want, and then insert themselves into the visual narrative as often as possible. Richard and LIsa Robinson take an exceptionally onanistic approach to their duties by printing as many photos of themselves with rock stars, record execs and scenesters as they can fit. There are 5 with Lenny Kaye and either one or both of them in this issue alone. Because it’s early 1976, there is a bunch on the CBGB scene, with Heartbreakers and Television pics I’ve absolutely never seen. Cyrinda Foxe gets herself into many a photo, as well she should, and Lance Loud is out and about as well. 

There are other photo spreads on Cherry Vanilla, Roxy Music, The Marbles, Patti Smith Group (with Ivan Kral giving Shaun Cassidy and Leif Garrett a run for their money in the set-teenage-girls’-hearts-aflame dept.), Elton John, David Bowie and Jim Dandy (!). There’s an early photo spread of Blondie’s Debbie Harry with a totally different, almost Midwest Christian wife look that I kinda like. (She doesn’t have a real name in this magazine – she’s “Blondie”). There’s also a “new bands” section trying to drum up excitement for Killer Kane, a Raspberries spinoff called Windfall and a bunch of hairy New Jersey bands. There’s even a Sable Starr (LA groupie) action shot to give the west coast a little love.  

There is some actual writing, though! I appreciated an entire column about comics – Marvel, DC and comix – treating it all very seriously and simpatico with rock and roll. There’s some BS about Kiss at a high school – I can’t read anything about Kiss – but there’s also a great letter to the editor from one “Peggy O’Neil” about how great Kiss are. Could it really be this Peggy O’Neil?? Donald Lyons writes about the film scene in 1976 and finds it “lousy”, this the year of Taxi Driver, The Killing of a Chinese Bookie, Mikey and Nicky, Network and Marathon Man, which was hot on the heels of an even better 1975. Don’t get me started.